LIFELINE GOES ON SAFARI WITH `JUNGLE BOOK`

Lawrence BommerCHICAGO TRIBUNE

Rudyard Kipling`s ''Jungle Book'' suits the storytelling side of the holiday season. On Tuesday, Lifeline Theatre launches its version of the story of Mowgli, the boy who was reared by wolves. Among other adventures, Mowgli proves his courage in a fight-to-the-death with the tiger Shere Khan. But his biggest challenge comes when he must choose between the jungle and the town.

Adapted by Christina Calvit and directed by Meryl Friedman, the Lifeline production features live music, as well as acrobatics and jungle spectacle.

(The animal makeup design, we`re promised, will be authentically East Indian.)

''Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind,'' Friday, Stage Left Theatre, 3244 N. Clark St.; 883-8830: An evening of Italian ''futurist'' plays, ''Too Much Light'' consists of 30 very brief plays to be performed in 60 minutes. The late-night show combines works from the original Italian futurists

(Marinetti, Corra, Settimelli) with pieces by neo-futurists like Greg Allen.

Where the original futurists wanted to offer Italy a moral armament against the chaos of World War I, the neo-futurists say their mission is to

''take it upon ourselves to prepare America for the holocaust of the upcoming Bush era.'' Assuming that the audience can accept the ''challenge of leaving their voyeuristic lethargy behind,'' theatergoers are invited to

musical version of Dickens` last-and unfinished-novel will allow audiences to vote midway through the second act on three matters: the identities of the murderer and the detective and which couple in the cast will get to sing the final duet. David Perkovich directs a cast of 16.